Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 874 Scott Adams： Taking Your Calls for the Simultaneous Swaddle

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in here. Hey Jan, get in here. Do you have your soft blanket? It's

00:00:15.600 time for the simultaneous swaddle. And questions? Yeah, questions. There is so much news that

00:00:23.740 I've got to do this twice a day just to get it all in. Two hours a day of live streaming

00:00:30.180 and I love every minute of it because I get to spend it with you. Now if I were President

00:00:35.640 Trump and I was trying to tell you how good the simultaneous swaddle is, well I would

00:00:42.860 say things like this. I would say it might be the best ever. It could be the best ever

00:00:48.280 simultaneous swaddle. Everybody's telling me they've never seen anything like it.

00:00:53.740 I mean they've never seen anything like it. It's the simultaneous swaddle and even my

00:00:58.400 critics are saying they can't believe it. They can't believe it. Nobody's done this

00:01:02.060 before. It's the most amazing thing we've ever seen. Yes, if I were President Trump, that's

00:01:08.640 how I would sell this. So, some of you may have questions. Let me mention a few things

00:01:14.020 before we do that. If you're trying to guess how long it will take you to get paper goods

00:01:19.860 on the shelf. Let's say toilet paper as the prime example. I have an estimate. And the

00:01:27.100 estimate is approximately one month from whenever the shelves were mostly dry. And the reasoning

00:01:35.840 is this. If you were to guess of all the people who did a little hoarding and all the people

00:01:42.420 who didn't, because surely there were people who didn't do any or didn't do much. If you

00:01:46.960 take the average, I think the average is that each family had about a month of supply. Now,

00:01:54.120 that's a guess, of course. But it feels about what people would do on average. Some people

00:01:58.780 would have six months. Some people would forget to go to the store. They would kind of balance

00:02:03.160 each other out. So, let's say a month. So, if things were normal, it would take about

00:02:08.040 a month. But of course, as soon as they got here, they would be hoarded unless the stores

00:02:13.620 put a limit on it and say, well, you know, two toilet papers for you. And at which point

00:02:18.340 the problem is solved. So, I think it's a month from the day that it started. So, that's my

00:02:28.260 estimate for that. Have you seen some news about Joe Biden in the comments? Because I looked

00:02:37.040 for the news on the front page of CNN and Fox News. And I kept looking. This was earlier.

00:02:44.720 Maybe there's something there now. And there was no mention of a little story about Joe Biden.

00:02:52.000 Have you heard it? Well, I don't know what really happened or really did not happen. But there's

00:02:58.360 a Me Too accusation that has the patina of credibility. The patina of credibility. You don't

00:03:06.040 get to say patina too much in public. But anytime I get a chance, I'm going to go right in there

00:03:11.480 with the patina. So, if you haven't heard the accusation, there's a – send it the kids

00:03:18.740 away. Send the children. Children, go play with your screens. Get away from this adult activity.

00:03:26.260 So, there was a woman who worked as a staffer, I guess, in the 80s and 90s in his office. And

00:03:33.700 she alleges, alleges, I say, that he forcefully tried to kiss her. And let's say that he put

00:03:45.080 a part of his hand in a place that she didn't want. Now, I haven't checked yet, but I'm going

00:03:55.440 to guess that the hashtag will be trending by tomorrow. Hashtag fingerbanging Biden. Now,

00:04:08.740 is that not a winner? Fingerbanging Biden? You might have to spell it with a G or not

00:04:15.180 the G. I'm not quite sure yet. But is this story true? I don't know. Who knows? Who

00:04:21.800 knows? Apparently, she had contemporaneous reports and she was backing up somebody else 0.90

00:04:28.140 who had similar reports and blah, blah, blah. Well, I don't know about any of that. But what

00:04:32.740 I do know is that I can't quite imagine him getting elected at this point. It went from

00:04:41.880 hard to believe to, okay, that's over, to impossible. So, I just tweeted around a video

00:04:48.700 that Kamala Harris just did. She was talking about the vote for the relief package, whatever 0.99

00:04:54.100 it's called. And long ago, I had predicted that she would disappear after withdrawing from

00:05:00.800 the race. And then she would retool. And she would actually get consultants who would

00:05:05.780 coach her on her physical mannerisms and how to use her hand gestures and even maybe how

00:05:11.160 to dress and, you know, all the basics of a politician, you know, how you look, how you

00:05:16.100 talk, how you move. And I don't know, maybe she just had a good day. But it looks like she

00:05:25.160 came back improved. It looks like, now, of course, many of you are blind to it because

00:05:30.180 you don't think she can get elected. You don't want to vote for her. She did something bad 0.73

00:05:35.080 a million years ago, blah, blah, Willie Brown. But I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking

00:05:39.740 about the transformation of a, let's say, a candidate who had a lot of rough edges in terms

00:05:48.600 of style. And I just predicted that it would somewhat dramatically improve from the time

00:05:55.060 she disappeared mostly to the time that she needed to reappear. And it looks like that's

00:05:59.600 happening. So does that mean anything? We'll see. I guess she's in the, I guess she's in

00:06:07.640 the top three for consideration. But there's a, there's a Latina senator in Nevada who's also

00:06:16.980 high on the list. And that might make sense demographically. That might make a little more

00:06:21.820 sense. So there's no certainty about Kamala Harris, but it's fun to watch. All right.

00:06:28.940 One of the most interesting questions is that there are very reasonable people, people I know

00:06:37.380 from Twitter, from, from, you know, years and years of experience, who are smart and rational

00:06:42.680 and usually right, who are, who believe that the coronavirus thing is, is overblown and that

00:06:49.560 the hysteria was out of proportion to the, you know, what it would ultimately become. And

00:06:55.680 that it was a mistake to have the, have the economy shut down so hard. Now, here's the thing

00:07:04.180 that makes this so interesting. In the end, we'll never know. You know, you think that eventually,

00:07:12.000 well, we'll find out in the long run, but in this case, we won't, we actually won't know

00:07:16.920 if it was a gigantic mass hysteria or we did a really good job in stopping it. We'll never

00:07:25.340 know. Now, the wild card, of course, I say this all the time is the, the meds that are being

00:07:30.660 tested, whether it's a hydrochloroquine or something else, the res, whatever it is. And

00:07:38.000 then China thinks they have something, but that's probably a lie. So there must be a dozen or more

00:07:43.260 different meds that have at least some promise and they're being tested pretty quickly. So what

00:07:48.760 happens if the meds work? Let's just say hypothetically, let's say if the hydrochloroquine,

00:07:55.920 it works and the supply gets up to, gets up to speed pretty well. Wouldn't that look like

00:08:04.860 we beat the curve because people would go back to work? Maybe they get a little sick,

00:08:10.180 but they don't die. They don't need ventilators. The hospital isn't crashed. People aren't that

00:08:15.200 worried. We protect, we protect the old people for a little while longer. Everybody's smarter 1.00

00:08:20.420 about washing their hands. So to me, it seems like we have a pretty distinct path out and at least

00:08:29.780 there's a possibility. I don't know what the odds are, but there's a possibility that we'll get to

00:08:35.140 that better place without running out of ventilators. Now that's based on the fact that we, we have

00:08:40.580 enough at the moment, but what's tomorrow look like? You know, the, the whole reason that we were

00:08:46.700 building them like crazy is that it seems like all the smart people who know epidemics and follow

00:08:53.040 this for a living, they seem pretty unified that this is going to be bad. So you can't tell anything

00:09:00.200 from, you know, the snapshot in time. You have to look at what they say it's going to happen, but what

00:09:05.580 if it doesn't happen? What, what if we get a total handle on this and deaths are under 5,000 for the

00:09:11.020 country, which by the way is my, uh, I'm going to make that my prediction. So my prediction is fewer

00:09:18.760 than 5,000 deaths from coronavirus in the United States. Now that would be at great odds with the

00:09:28.040 experts, but it assumes innovation. So it assumes a tool comes online that hasn't been used yet. So

00:09:37.040 that's the, that's the optimism that we were smarter about how doing, doing that. You know,

00:09:41.820 maybe we test better. You've seen amazing things about, um, the test kits. Oh, by the way, here's

00:09:47.720 another, here's another, uh, prediction that I made a while ago. Um, I told you that I'd, I'd worked

00:09:55.440 with startups at Berkeley and this was just even a few years ago. And one of the things I saw is that

00:10:01.820 they had a whole bunch of technology that they were putting, they were making different companies out of

00:10:06.340 but all had the same quality, which is, um, there had been developed over the years, rapid ways to

00:10:13.000 test blood. So after 9-11 and after, you know, the bioweapon scares and stuff and anthrax, the

00:10:20.740 government tasked the labs to find a way to very rapidly test blood for bioweapons. Now that would

00:10:29.740 include, of course, the ability to test for, uh, you know, a virus. So I told you that I had the

00:10:34.840 advantage that I'd seen all these startups who could do this much faster and more cheaply and

00:10:39.840 just with, you know, desktop units and stuff. And I predicted that those would start coming

00:10:45.680 online. And I think that's what we're seeing. You know, I'm not sure it's the same technology,

00:10:50.380 but I would imagine that the ability to rapidly test blood is something that did not exist in the,

00:10:56.500 the old fossilized, you know, system where you send it away to the lab or, but I assumed

00:11:04.240 that it was something that existed and could be ramped up and it looks like that might be happening

00:11:09.760 now. So that could be great. So what happens if we, we find a way to test everybody cheaply at home

00:11:16.520 and accurately, well, will the people who say, I told you it wasn't going to be a big deal.

00:11:23.520 Are they right? Who would be right? Would they be right by saying it was mass hysteria? Well,

00:11:29.940 only because a miracle, you know, that, that human ingenuity found a way to solve it. I know.

00:11:37.080 On the other hand, um, we don't know too much about China, for example, how they got ahold of it on top

00:11:43.980 of it, or if they did even, uh, could be that that was the hydrochloroquine as well. All right.

00:11:53.480 You're in a town hall with Congressman Schiff. Got a question I can ask. Yes.

00:11:58.840 Uh, Congressman Schiff. Um, is there anything that's good that couldn't have been done sooner?

00:12:09.320 Just a general question. Because all day long, you're watching idiots on television criticize

00:12:16.460 anybody. You know, whether it's Trump or anybody's criticizing anybody, it's all the same empty

00:12:23.240 criticism. Should have been done sooner. Everything should have been done sooner. You know, after the

00:12:29.940 fact, we're all geniuses. Oh yeah, I should have been done sooner. Which completely loses the fact

00:12:35.280 that at the time, nobody really knew what to do. But you have to do something. So you do something,

00:12:40.480 maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe adjust. But I have no patience for the people who are going to

00:12:46.560 do an autopsy on a, basically a brand new situation. Uh, did you see CNN anchor interrupt Navarro

00:12:55.200 constantly? I did not. But it sounds fun. I hope there's a clip of it. Uh, do you know many cell phones

00:13:03.520 have gone dark? Good question. I don't know. Maybe we'll get that sometimes. Uh, let me see if I can

00:13:11.920 take some questions. Let's check our technology. Let's see. How about Euler? If I pronounce that

00:13:22.400 right, Euler? Euler? Euler? Hello. Do you have a question for me?

00:13:31.200 Hey John, uh, I've read all your books. I'm Brazilian. Can you hear me?

00:13:35.360 Yes, I can. Go ahead. Uh, I just want to know how can I use more visual persuasion when speaking and

00:13:41.880 writing? Because I see you here in the Periscopes and when I read you, I see you have a lot of visual

00:13:47.840 persuasion in, uh, I read in Winn Bigley and I just want to know that. Yeah. It's, it's really just a

00:13:54.240 matter of training yourself in practice. So there's nothing magical to it. You just have to know that,

00:14:00.000 Matt, that visual persuasion works better and then keep that in the front of your mind. Cause you know,

00:14:05.760 most of us can find a visual way to describe things if we're trying. So it's really about reminding

00:14:11.840 yourself to try. That's, I'd say that's 80% of the technique and then 20% is, are you good at

00:14:17.360 thinking up visual analogies? But most people are, most people are. So there's nothing more

00:14:22.080 to it than that. I hope that helps. Yeah. Cause I see you and president Trump doing it since,

00:14:26.960 and it's great. I try to use, I'm a lawyer when, uh, when speaking in courts and, uh, writing my,

00:14:33.600 my files and stuff. And I just want to know how you, how could I get better on that? But thanks,

00:14:39.200 Scott. Yeah. Just, just, uh, remind yourself and just do it. So that's really all it is.

00:14:45.840 All right. Oh, thank you, man. Thank you. All right. So there, there's some things,

00:14:50.480 especially in persuasion that are just practice. You just got to remind yourself and then you just

00:14:55.120 got to do it. And there's not much more to it that makes it that interesting. All right,

00:15:02.000 Beth, are you there? Beth, Beth, Beth, can you hear me? Do you have a question, Beth? Yeah,

00:15:10.240 you've been talking about, um, the golden, the golden age coming for a couple of years.

00:15:15.760 And I was wondering if you think this might accelerate it.

00:15:20.480 I think this is very much like the third act in the movie. It's like, everything's going well. And

00:15:26.320 then, Oh my God, it's the problem. You didn't see coming and it's going to ruin everything. And

00:15:31.120 there's no way we can get out of it, but we will, of course. Yeah, I think so. I'm like,

00:15:36.400 I think people are going to have a lot less tolerance for inefficiency and wasting time and

00:15:43.200 that sort of thing. Well, there's one good thing about an emergency is that, uh, it reveals all your

00:15:48.880 weaknesses and man, if we, we've seen all of our weaknesses and I would, I would say there's,

00:15:55.760 there's nothing that's worked worse than Congress. I think Congress just gets a failing grade.

00:16:00.560 Both sides. I mean, you can't argue. It's, it's undeniable that it was, that was really just

00:16:06.640 disgraceful. I think it has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat. I don't think it was just

00:16:11.200 disgraceful as a, as a body. Um, uh, and did I answer your question? What was your question?

00:16:19.040 I asked if, uh, you thought that this event would accelerate the golden age.

00:16:23.200 Yeah. You know, it's going to take a little while to get on our feet, but I'm always on,

00:16:27.520 I'm always on the side of it's going to be faster than you think. And there's one more question when

00:16:34.320 you're done. Go ahead. Yeah. I was just going to say that the guessing that things will be faster

00:16:38.800 than you think when humans are trying to solve a brand new problem is you, it's almost always the

00:16:44.000 right bet because we're really good and you get smarter and smarter and smarter until you're smart

00:16:48.320 enough. And we get there quickly where humans are always slow is if you hire somebody to, you know,

00:16:54.400 remodel your house, you know, you ask your, your lawyer to turn something around in a day,

00:17:00.480 you know, in the real world where you're just doing, yeah, it's my job. I'm just going to work.

00:17:05.440 I'm getting a paycheck. Everybody's slow then. Cause it just doesn't matter. But in, in emergencies

00:17:10.960 like Y2K, we really do excel at that stuff and we do it faster than you think. Um, I guess,

00:17:17.840 Afghanistan would be an exception. What was your next question? Have you always been an optimist? 0.70

00:17:24.800 Um, I would say that I've always been an optimist internally, but I actually had to learn to be an

00:17:31.440 optimist externally because I thought that complaining about things was entertaining and habitual for people.

00:17:40.000 Yeah. And it's, it's a gigantic character flaw that until somebody is kind enough to be cruel,

00:17:46.960 you'll never see in yourself because complaining is just the easiest thing to do. What, what are you

00:17:53.040 thinking today? Ah, you know, somebody was mean to me and late. I got a stomach ache.

00:17:58.960 So it's the most automatic thing because you're thinking about your problems, you know, if you're

00:18:02.880 trying to solve them. So it was a friend of mine who in alcohol may have been involved years ago

00:18:08.800 who basically just told me I was too negative and I was just, you know, wearing around. And I thought,

00:18:13.600 what? I'm not, I'm not negative at all in my mind, but indeed the topics I talked about were

00:18:21.440 downers. Even so it was bothering other people far more than it was bothering me. And I was the one

00:18:26.160 with the problems. So, and, and you learn that, that you just can't burden people with a nonstop

00:18:32.640 fire hose of complaints and problems. Nobody wants to be around that. So I had to learn that the hard

00:18:39.200 way. So I hope there's somebody brutally cruel in your life who will do the, the favor to you

00:18:45.920 that somebody did to me. I'm the optimist in my house. So it's cool. And, and thanks for doing

00:18:51.600 these. It's super helpful. And yeah, it gives me perspective. I appreciate it. Good. Well,

00:18:56.720 thanks for the questions. Take care. All right. Let's see what else we got here. We're going to go

00:19:04.000 to Kevin. Kevin, you look like you got something to say. Hello, Kevin. You got a question for me?

00:19:15.680 I'm the part about the wall and the example and everything. And, and, uh, it, it rings true. So,

00:19:22.000 um, what I've noticed in the press conferences with Trump and he had an interview with Sean

00:19:26.400 Hannity, uh, tonight is he seems to be dialing it back a little bit. Um, he still gets a jab in

00:19:32.960 there. Um, and he kind of explained it on Hannity tonight. He said that he's going to run on his

00:19:38.160 record. So he's not going to do what he did last time. You know, that's interesting because I was,

00:19:44.960 I was thinking of pointing it out, but I hadn't decided if it was my imagination. It looks like the

00:19:51.200 president is taking a conscious effort to be more bipartisan, not just for the, you know,

00:19:57.120 the length of the crisis, but it looks like a strategy, doesn't it? It looks like he's,

00:20:03.440 because he can obviously turn it on and turn it off. You know, if he's meeting with the queen,

00:20:07.440 he turns it off. So we know he can turn it on and off. So when it's off, you have to know it's

00:20:12.880 conscious, right? Cause the default is on. So turning it off is the hard part. So it looks like

00:20:19.600 he's made that decision. And I think his instincts are right on because he doesn't have much to run

00:20:27.420 against. I mean, right now Biden's just decomposing while we talk, but, um, and so I think just being

00:20:35.960 nice, if he gets a little bump from doing a good job handling the crisis, which we all hope, even if we,

00:20:42.060 if we don't like the president, you still hope he does a good job of the crisis. So if he,

00:20:46.460 if he gets that done, you know, you've seen that even his support with women just took a big jump

00:20:52.180 up. His people are going to be remembering this more than they'll remember every other thing he's

00:20:57.020 ever done just because it's another recency issue. So, so if he gets us through this and let's say the,

00:21:03.140 uh, the, the cynics or the skeptics who say it was never going to be that big after all,

00:21:08.000 they're going to, they're going to go nuts because they're going to say, you didn't save us.

00:21:12.780 There was nothing there to begin with. Oh, it's so unfair. Don't get reelected because it's a trick.

00:21:18.280 It's a trick. So, you know, that's coming. I mean, you could, you could see that from months.

00:21:23.460 Yeah. All right. Thank you. There is, there is one other thing too. Um, you mentioned you were

00:21:28.660 the first one that I heard mentioned about the ventilators and using, um, uh, more than one

00:21:34.340 for more than one patient. And he also mentioned that on Hannity tonight. Um, he also mentioned

00:21:39.360 that they're using 3d printers to print an adapter that will do this for up to four and also CPAP

00:21:46.240 machines and the anesthesiologist, um, uh, ventilator. Yeah. All, all the things that you

00:21:53.240 probably heard from me, um, fairly early. I think you were first. Yeah, maybe so. Um,

00:22:01.500 yeah. And you know, the, the thing that, uh, I predicted, you can see right in front of you,

00:22:06.260 the, the way that they basically quadrupled ventilator capacity. Who saw that coming?

00:22:13.160 Really? Who saw that coming? Well, let's just quadruple it with a little valve here. So

00:22:18.740 and, and in a thousand different ways, people are making that kind of little innovation that

00:22:22.760 that turned into big things. Very impressive. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. All

00:22:27.680 right. Let's see. Take another question here. Let's go to a psychic Brian, psychic Brian, psychic

00:22:39.160 Brian. Can you hear me? Do you have a question? Hello? My call. Thanks for taking my call.

00:22:48.000 What's your question? I have a question. I have a question on hypnosis. Sure. I was wondering if

00:22:52.600 hypnosis can change the simulation that you're living in. You've talked, um, um, in your scopes about

00:23:00.120 simulation. We might be living in a simulation and I, I, that's my second part. Um, so how,

00:23:07.040 how do you think hypnosis can change your own simulation that you might be living in and how

00:23:13.200 long would that take if you were practicing hypnosis? Well, no, I don't think there's any,

00:23:20.660 any way that hypnosis as the, as a practice in which you sit in front of one person and they go into a

00:23:26.660 relaxed state. I don't think that rewires the, the simulation, but, uh, and of course,

00:23:33.100 anytime I talk about the simulation, it's just for fun because it's a completely unprovable

00:23:37.440 situation. I just like it because it's provocative, but it does seem as though you can change movies.

00:23:44.880 And let me give you a specific example. If you were, uh, the most common one, you know,

00:23:50.200 is Donald Trump a dangerous monster or do you have TDS? You know, the, the two different movies.

00:23:55.540 Yes. Keep, keep in mind that everybody in both movies survived eight, many cases procreated and

00:24:03.980 they live their life in a completely different reality. So you see it every day and you're going

00:24:09.800 to see it again when, whenever we get past this crisis, if it doesn't get as big as people said

00:24:15.020 to movies again, and people will live there forever and they will never have to resolve them.

00:24:20.700 So when I say that you can change your, um, reality, you can change your filter on it and

00:24:27.520 just enter another movie. Yes. That's what I mean. Your movie, your movie, not so much the

00:24:32.480 simulation, but the movie you might be in. So you can't, you, you probably can't change it to any

00:24:37.440 movie, but it's clear. It's clearly an obvious, you know, you can just observe it a thousand different

00:24:42.260 ways that people are in different movies and you do see people occasionally switch movie. You know,

00:24:47.460 it's usually big news because it's so rare, you know, a Democrat who decides to be a Trump supporter,

00:24:52.780 that sort of thing. Um, and I have experienced in my own life changing my filter, you know, usually

00:25:00.420 with some psychedelic experience or marijuana or something. But the, the, uh, the experience

00:25:06.700 of it is that your reality changed and you're just in a different movie for a while. But again,

00:25:10.580 you can still shop and, you know, live and broke. And that's changed your life. I mean,

00:25:16.320 it's for the better. You changed your filter and you became more successful over the years,

00:25:20.700 more well known. Well, I think, uh, yeah, that's a little bit of AB testing. And of course you always

00:25:26.560 need a little luck, but, uh, yeah, I just try filters and when my filter doesn't work, I say,

00:25:32.140 well, that filter didn't work. Let's see if I can adjust to a better one. All right. Thank you

00:25:36.720 for the question. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. All right. Bye. Let's see what Dunny has to say

00:25:47.460 because I don't know anybody else who has that named Dunny. D-U-N-N-Y. Dunny, are you there?

00:25:55.420 Do you have a question? Good. Yeah. So when you started doing the night time podcast,

00:26:02.360 it reminded me of when Ted Kopp on Nightline started in the late seventies with the hostage

00:26:08.020 crisis. And I was wondering where you, where you think I might go or it'd be fun to watch where it

00:26:16.580 goes. But, uh, anyway, thanks for everything. Appreciate all your, all your talks. Thanks for

00:26:22.060 the question. You know, um, I don't plan it, you know, I didn't plan to do the morning ones. I just

00:26:28.960 sort of evolved into it. I didn't, didn't plan to be a commentator about persuasion. I didn't plan

00:26:34.640 to write my three last three books until I had an idea and did them. So, um, you know, I always tell

00:26:41.000 people to build your talent stack so you can go in a lot of different directions. When this is over,

00:26:46.420 if I've done a, a job that people would want to see more of in whatever way, it would open up

00:26:52.720 opportunities, but I don't have a plan in advance about what I would do with that or, or where I take

00:26:57.800 it. Probably just something that's more and better along these lines, maybe do some more

00:27:03.340 interviews, see what that looks like. But, uh, thank you for the question. Keep it up. Thank you.

00:27:08.700 All right. Let's see what else we got here. Let's try Brian.

00:27:19.680 Who's Brian. Can you hear me?

00:27:22.480 Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, technical difficulty, maybe? Okay. That didn't work. This must be

00:27:32.860 excruciating if you're listening to it on a podcast. I'm sorry. All right. Let's go to the Krusty Krebs.

00:27:43.320 Krusty Krebs, are you there? Hello, Krusty. Do you have a question for me?

00:27:48.520 Uh, apparently not. Okay. Seems, seems he may have walked away.

00:27:59.900 All right. I'm in some weird mood, mode. Let's try somebody else. I swear I will get a real guest on here.

00:28:08.440 Let's see if Jet Girl is there. Jet Girl, are you there? Hello. Do you have a question for me?

00:28:20.320 And your perspective on the, um, statistical data that we get, whether it be, um, something that's

00:28:26.640 brought together as in, um, it's not Walthy, but whoever's gathering it in, uh, I think in DC,

00:28:33.540 there's a hospital that's gathering all the data and just ones coming out from all over and how you

00:28:38.200 feel, how much of it is true and, um, just what your overall opinion is about that.

00:28:43.520 The, the, the numbers are so non-believable in terms of, you know, uh, the likelihood that they're

00:28:52.000 actually accurate is so low that we're really in a complete fog of war. The only thing you can do is

00:28:57.700 try stuff and see what happens. And then even, and even then, as we've talked about before,

00:29:02.740 you still don't know if things change because of the thing you tried. It's kind of, it's, it's a real

00:29:08.860 guessing situation. So here, let me just go through some of the numbers that I have more or less

00:29:15.200 confidence in. I don't believe we know how many ventilators we will need. And I don't believe we

00:29:20.600 know how many are ordered. And I don't believe we know how many we have. I don't think we have any

00:29:25.280 visibility on that because if we did, I think the government would say, oh, here it is. You know,

00:29:29.660 it's just three numbers. Yeah. We need, we have on order three numbers. If they knew, they'd tell us,

00:29:36.840 which means they don't know. Likewise for all the other PPE, there's no visibility. And I think that

00:29:42.140 has something to do with the fact that, you know, a variety of entities are springing up to meet the

00:29:47.020 need. And I don't know that anybody has a idea how many of them can deliver and when are they real?

00:29:53.320 So I think we just don't know.

00:29:57.700 Do you think the shortage, the shortages is, do you think is a fear or do you think it's

00:30:02.080 realistically shortages?

00:30:05.020 Well, the, the, the shortages are based on what we anticipate for the most part. There are only a

00:30:11.780 few hospitals that look like they're starting to run low in real time right now. But for 99% of the

00:30:17.240 country, there's a shortage in the sense that they think they might need some down the road

00:30:21.580 and pretty quickly, you know, in a week or two, nobody knows. So that's the thing. You know,

00:30:27.820 will, will the social separation work? Will all the people who are coming in now who are probably

00:30:33.500 getting hydrochloroquine, are they not being hospitalized? So the problem's already solved.

00:30:40.000 I mean, one of the possibilities is that the problem is already solved and it just takes a while

00:30:45.360 for us to see it run through the system. And what I mean by that is if the hydrochloroquine is,

00:30:51.420 is at least keeping people from having to be hospitalized and there's, you know, lots of

00:30:56.200 anecdotal but not scientific evidence of that, then maybe it's already solved because it's just a

00:31:02.680 matter of supply. And I gotta, I gotta believe that those are coming online pretty quickly.

00:31:07.000 Probably the New York hospitals were already using it. You know, the, the people that you're

00:31:11.620 hearing are dying today are probably ones that were maybe a little too far gone or maybe ones that

00:31:17.580 would have died under almost any condition because they were that fragile. But what you should see

00:31:22.400 if the, if the meds are working is that the death rate will stabilize even as the infection rate is

00:31:28.580 climbing like crazy. So that's what I'm predicting. So I think we'll get, we'll get through it. And I think

00:31:34.540 it will be less, less than the worst case by far, but we'll never know if it was because we stopped

00:31:40.900 it. It'll just drive us crazy forever. All right. Thanks for the question. Thank you.

00:31:48.200 I'm starting to notice that people do not look like their icons.

00:31:56.400 Bella, are you there? Do you have a question? Okay. What's your question?

00:32:01.500 Can you hear me? I can. Okay, cool. So I'm a recent college grad and I'm just wondering now with like

00:32:13.600 how the economy is going, what kind of career field should I go into? Because I'm a business student

00:32:23.260 and I just had like an interview for a mortgage company for a sales job. Yeah. And they were really

00:32:34.100 excited about me, but they are holding off on the official offer letter because they just don't

00:32:40.900 know how things are going. Yeah, of course. Well, you know, I wish I could, I wish I could tell you

00:32:46.240 everything will be great in three months, but there's pretty good chance that the people who did not

00:32:51.640 already have jobs, of course, will be the last ones to go back to work because people prefer to hire 0.94

00:32:56.700 the people who are already there. But I think you just have to hold. It's probably, you know,

00:33:02.720 try to hold on through the summer and then a lot of stuff will start opening up. It would be my guess,

00:33:07.920 you know, subject to lots of uncertainty. But that's the best I can say. Maybe there's something

00:33:14.480 you can do temporarily or part-time or something, but for the good jobs, they're coming back. It

00:33:20.960 might be, you know, three, six months. So you might have some waiting to do. I'm sorry that you have

00:33:25.700 to, that your timing was so bad. I know. Although I suppose if you, if you had gotten the job a week

00:33:31.020 before, you'd still have lost it. So yeah, it wouldn't have ended up about the same. All right. Well,

00:33:36.200 good luck for that. And thank you for the question. Thank you.

00:33:38.840 Yeah. A lot of, a lot of people getting worried. Um, I don't think anybody's going to starve,

00:33:45.400 but it's going to get pretty tense. All right. I don't know how to pronounce your name. Is it

00:33:53.360 Tim Gier? Tim Gier? Can you hear me? Do you have a question? Hello? Yes. Hey, what's your question?

00:34:01.200 Thanks a lot for taking the call. I just want to quickly say I've been a big fan, read all your books,

00:34:05.980 uh, and thank you for doing, uh, these, uh, periscopes. Uh, they're the perfect combination

00:34:12.740 of, uh, objective and subjective. So that's been, uh, that's been very useful. Uh, I'm a software

00:34:20.180 engineer. I work up here in Montreal, in Quebec. So we've been remote for two weeks, everything's

00:34:25.560 shut down, but funny enough, uh, we've been the most productive we've ever been. So what, what,

00:34:31.380 what, uh, what would be your predictions on, uh, work from home policies, uh, after this, uh, shutdown?

00:34:39.100 Well, you know, you would think that people would say, hey, this work from home thing works so well

00:34:44.720 that we just got to keep doing that. But there, there are a lot of obstacles to working at home.

00:34:49.500 One of them is that there might be other people home. Uh, you know, I've been working from home for,

00:34:55.360 I don't know, 20 years or whatever. And if somebody else is home, even though you're working,

00:35:02.440 it's really hard to convince them that they shouldn't tell you about the dead animal that's

00:35:07.100 in the swimming pool. You know, it's really hard to convince somebody who's not working,

00:35:12.360 who's in the same house, that that suspicious smell needs to be investigated right now because

00:35:17.780 the house might blow up. It could be gas. And, you know, and when, when other people are in your

00:35:23.920 physical vicinity, they just have a lot of emergencies, you know, not the kind where you're

00:35:29.560 going to die necessarily, but just a lot of stuff you got to look into right away. So you, so, um,

00:35:35.680 in my case, Christina is amazing about, you know, understanding that separation and stuff.

00:35:41.560 So I don't have any problem with her, but a lot of people are going to have that problem.

00:35:45.200 Working at home is kind of hard if somebody else is there, especially if some of the time it's kids.

00:35:50.000 So a lot of people are going to be desperate to get back to work. You know, there won't be that

00:35:55.080 many people who said, you know, I'd like to do this every day. A lot of people don't like their

00:36:00.180 commute, but that's really different from wanting to be home all the time. You know, it's a good

00:36:05.320 change of pace, maybe once or twice a week. Uh, so my guess is that, and also, uh, managers are tend to

00:36:13.380 be tyrants. And so for their own little, you know, fiefdom, they're going to want you to come in so

00:36:19.240 that you're physically there. So they have somebody to boss around and talk to. So I think, uh, yeah,

00:36:24.220 I think humans being humans, this may change things up to 20%, meaning maybe there'll be 20% more

00:36:32.320 telecommuting after this, but I don't think it's a hundred percent, you know, maybe 20%. That's my

00:36:37.220 guess. All right. Thanks for the question. Thank you.

00:36:39.920 All right. It was a interesting question. Let's see if we can keep it going with, uh,

00:36:50.760 Nils. Nils, Nils, Nils, Nils. Nils, do you have a question for me?

00:37:00.680 Nils, are you washing the dishes? Get over here. Ask me a question. 0.99

00:37:03.460 Hello, this is Nils. Yes, Nils. What's your question?

00:37:07.620 Wow. I tried to call you the other day and I, uh, I hit the wrong button. This is really

00:37:12.580 wonderful to talk to you. I, I, I was going to be funny and disconnect you, but I won't

00:37:17.780 do that. It would have been hilarious. All right. What's your question?

00:37:21.160 I have to say, Scott, I've been following you for the last two years. I've gotten my father

00:37:28.060 into you and I have been living the golden life.

00:37:35.900 Okay. I swear I didn't do that. He just got disconnected.

00:37:41.100 I, I promise you I did not do that, but it was kind of perfect.

00:37:49.180 All right. Um, bye Nils. We'll have to try it again. I swear to God, I didn't do that. That was, 0.90

00:37:54.440 you know, even after I said it wouldn't be funny. It looks like maybe I did, but I didn't.

00:38:01.560 All right. Uh, can you hear me? Do you have a question?

00:38:11.900 What do you think will be the triggers that turn this whole thing around and we get back

00:38:17.660 to a normal life?

00:38:18.820 Well, I think my greatest hope is that the meds keep you out of the hospital. And if that's true,

00:38:25.800 people will take their chances with getting sick. The other possibility is, you know, we find out

00:38:31.220 that 80% or some huge number of the public already has it. And then we'd say, oh, well, if half of us

00:38:38.240 had it, we're closer to some kind of accidental herd immunity. The other thing is the, uh, I think this is

00:38:46.460 going to be maybe the black, what is it? The underdog or the black horse or the black swan

00:38:50.780 or something, not the black swan, but the thing you don't see coming, but it's just sort of plodding

00:38:55.820 along. And it's that, uh, the blood serum stuff where the people who have already had it and

00:39:01.200 recovered have the antibodies and you can isolate them in the serum and put it in another person

00:39:06.300 and it gives them, we think some immunity. And it's, that one's always just sort of thrown in

00:39:12.860 the list. It's like, oh, this has happened. This has happened in ventilators and pills and stuff

00:39:17.080 and the blood serum thing. But the question is, is that the one that could ramp up the fastest?

00:39:23.880 Because how many, how many recovered people do you need and how much serum do you get out of them

00:39:29.280 to handle how many people and how long does it take? Now, under normal situation, you wouldn't want

00:39:35.300 a lot of healthy people going in and doing this weird blood serum thing. And I actually,

00:39:39.660 I don't even know if it's for before you get it to keep you from getting it, or is it to help you

00:39:45.040 after you've gotten it? I think maybe both. Um, so we'll see, you know, it, that one just keeps

00:39:51.440 plodding along without getting much attention, but the math of it and the practicality of it

00:39:57.040 suggests that we could scale it up. So maybe that'll be the thing. Anyway, those are the three,

00:40:02.880 the three things I think are by far the most important. And then the, then also the cheap tests

00:40:08.620 that you can do a home because if we could all cheaply and immediately test a home, we'd have

00:40:12.560 no problem tomorrow. So any one of those things could end up being the thing, but we probably

00:40:18.400 have at least four things. Optimistically, we might have at least four things that are the thing,

00:40:24.560 you know, on top of the social, social isolation. So I, I feel as though it's starting to look like

00:40:31.740 a mismatch, you know, us versus the virus when it's been exactly the opposite till now, I was,

00:40:37.820 it's still a mismatch. So we're right on the cusp of having a real good visibility about these other

00:40:43.360 tools. And then we go on offense and then it gets fun, not for the virus. All right. Thanks for the

00:40:49.780 question. Nancy. Thanks. Let's see. How about Patches? Patches, I'm adding you because your name is

00:41:03.820 Patches. Patches, do you have a, do you have a question for me? Thanks. I have two, two things

00:41:12.600 to talk about really quickly. They're both about related to the, the Trump pills. And one of them

00:41:17.200 is basically China, which I kind of go along with your theory that they're kind of evil. And I think 1.00

00:41:23.200 they're probably not announcing the pills because it allows them to continue to increase their control

00:41:27.580 of their society over there. Well, there's actually maybe even another reason, which is, you know,

00:41:34.220 the, one of the studies that said the pills don't work. And by the way, the French study that said that

00:41:39.720 they do, people online are saying that's debunked. I usually side with the debunkers. If somebody says

00:41:45.140 something's true, and then somebody says that study's debunked, if I don't know anything about

00:41:49.200 it, I usually side with the debunker. The debunker is usually right. Not every time. But there was one

00:41:56.400 study out of Xinjuan, what university or something in, in China that indicated that the pills don't

00:42:03.820 work. But in the same article, they said, well, but these, this expensive drugs that are made in

00:42:09.960 China, well, they really work. So, you know, you don't want to try these cheap ones that you can 1.00

00:42:14.720 get anywhere. Probably don't work. What you want is these really expensive ones that you can only get

00:42:20.440 in, in China. So you can't really trust anybody at this point. Yeah. So the whole thing where they 1.00

00:42:27.380 built the hospitals and shut the hospitals down so quick, I thought was suspicious. Like it just

00:42:31.780 wasn't contained by locking some doors to that point that they had something going on beyond just

00:42:37.620 social distancing to get rid of the hospitals. Yeah. It, to me, it seems obvious that they had a,

00:42:44.700 um, they had some kind of therapeutic treatment that made a big difference, but I, maybe we'll

00:42:50.200 never know. Who knows? All right. Yeah, go ahead. The thing about, this is, goes back to the same

00:42:54.720 issue domestically. I just was listening to, I'm in Gainesville, Florida and listening to our local

00:42:59.200 politicians talking today. And a person called us like, is there any, you know, treatments or pills for

00:43:04.100 this? And the local medical people were like, no, we can just put you on respirators and do this and

00:43:08.860 do that. And I'm liking, is, is this ignorance or is this more of the wink, wink? We're just not

00:43:14.680 going to tell people we know how to do something about this. Uh, every, everything that's happening

00:43:19.420 under the hood, you know, the people who are talking individually, you know, person to person

00:43:23.720 suggest that the doctors are prescribing it and it works. All of it. A hundred percent of the

00:43:30.160 anecdotal, again, not scientific. We, we all want a scientific study, but a hundred percent

00:43:35.780 of the anecdotals from doctors is, yeah, we're giving it and it works, but it's all on the

00:43:41.120 down low because, um, my point on this is that because it's on the down low, there might be

00:43:48.100 some people don't get the word and don't treat their patients as well as they could. And if

00:43:52.760 there's people dying in this, you know, other hospitals, because they don't understand there

00:43:56.760 is a protocol they could do because no one's like, come out and say, try this. Yeah. You

00:44:01.200 know, um, if you're talking about the, the patients, they definitely might not be informed.

00:44:07.980 I think at this point, there's probably no doctor in the country who's not informed on

00:44:13.700 that. Probably every doctor is informed of that. I just feel like it or 99%. So it'd be

00:44:19.880 not a big, not a big problem. You've got more faith in that than I do.

00:44:23.500 Uh, maybe so. All right. Thanks for questions. Let's take at least one more. Let's, let's

00:44:32.760 see what, uh, David wants. David's been waiting here patiently. David, David, do you have a

00:44:41.240 question for me, David? Hi.

00:44:46.440 When you were speaking about, uh, the premonition, especially, I think it was a shower faucet or

00:44:51.940 the temperature gauge. You just knew something was going to break. Um, this is a question

00:44:57.380 about kind of having premonitions. There was something, do you remember that? It was in

00:45:01.420 the shower or something, was it not? Yeah. Yeah. I had a long story about a broken shower

00:45:06.220 that, that I expected to break. Yeah. I, I have those quite frequently that I've started

00:45:12.060 to refer them to, to them as memories of the future. People like that. That's awesome.

00:45:17.420 Uh, I was curious. Um, does, uh, I kind of have two questions. Um, has this ever happened

00:45:23.260 with Christina and do you think that's why you guys, uh, sort of came together? And the

00:45:29.180 second question, uh, if you don't want to answer that the first one, that's fine. But the second

00:45:33.780 one is, do you think with, cause I think you've influenced, um, I mean, thousands of people

00:45:38.920 by now at getting better at understanding the system of reality of persuasion that we're in

00:45:44.560 and how people use that skill. Do you think as part of the golden age, if you will, of

00:45:49.680 our psyches, people will become better at maybe getting premonitions or?

00:45:56.080 Well, no, I'm not, you know, I have fun talking about new agey stuff, but you know, fundamentally

00:46:02.440 I wouldn't put money on any of it. So, um, I'm a, I'm a deep rationalist at my core, but

00:46:09.060 it's really fun to talk about the, you, the premonitions and the simulation and affirmations

00:46:13.900 and stuff. And I don't have reasons for why some of these appear to be true or appear

00:46:19.300 to work. It could be an entirely psychological phenomenon, confirmation bias, but it doesn't

00:46:25.560 make it any less fun. You know, here's a, here's a, uh, thought experiment. If I said

00:46:30.860 to you, I'll tell you what, uh, I can make you think you're having an extraordinary life,

00:46:36.520 but in reality it won't be. Will you take the deal? And, and you'll never know the difference.

00:46:41.700 There'll never be a time when somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, Hey, Hey, you're

00:46:45.680 hypnotized. You'll never know. You'll just have a terrible life, but you'll think it was

00:46:50.520 great. Would you take the deal? I would, I would, that that's your reality. If you think

00:46:57.000 it's great, it's great. So, so at least that much I feel is objectively true. You know, you

00:47:03.540 can, you can change your filter on life and it effectively changes your reality. But, uh,

00:47:08.700 beyond that, anybody's guess. Fair enough. Has Christina had the, any of these experiences

00:47:13.400 real quick and I'll go. Thanks. Um, I don't know if she's ever mentioned it, so I couldn't

00:47:19.460 say yes or no specifically. Uh, I do know that when the first time I saw her, um, uh, my feeling

00:47:27.600 was of seeing the future. Um, but you know, you can't, the thing you could never separate

00:47:35.660 is, uh, whether you could have made something happen, you know, just because you wanted it.

00:47:41.640 So when I saw her, it felt like seeing the future, but it's also something I immediately

00:47:47.000 was attracted to and, you know, put some effort into making it happen. So I don't know who knows.

00:47:52.300 It's all fun to talk about anyway. All right. Yeah. Thanks so much. Thanks, David. Let's do one

00:47:57.300 more. Um, let's take, uh, you know, I'm trying to guess based on, uh, the weird little, uh, icons

00:48:09.300 that you have. And half the time I can't even get your gender right, but I think this is Jennifer. 1.00

00:48:18.760 I'm good. How are you? Do you have a question?

00:48:22.300 And in Donald Trump taking care of this bill that the Congress is trying to pull off, like

00:48:33.540 the whole country is so furious. Is there any chance you think he would do something and

00:48:39.760 pick, pick up this free money and, and, you know, strip out some of that pork and well, you

00:48:46.900 know, um, depending on what station you're listening to and who's talking.

00:48:52.300 These, the bill is either a gigantic mistake in a hundred ways, or it all makes sense if

00:48:59.000 you just heard why. So I've heard, I've heard both versions of those, of those, but the one

00:49:05.580 that, uh, maybe really set me back is what was listening to the president describing how

00:49:12.260 good it was. And he, he had a little context to each one and I thought, oh, it does have

00:49:17.800 provisions. So they're not going to do a stock buyback. Okay. That was one of the things. And,

00:49:22.140 and it, and it seems aimed at keeping employees employed more than just helping them. And it's a

00:49:29.580 loan. So they have to pay it back. And as he's talking about it, I kept, I kept waiting for the

00:49:34.300 things that I knew I was going to hate. And then he got, he got to the, uh, was it the Met or what is

00:49:40.520 it? The Kennedy center. So he gets to the Kennedy center. I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. He's just going

00:49:47.320 to go off on this. He starts saying how he likes the Kennedy center. And he talked him down from 35

00:49:53.420 to 25. And a lot of people are employed there. And I'm like, what am I watching? Now in that case,

00:50:00.400 in that case, I'm pretty sure that was in, and I think he actually said this, that, you know,

00:50:05.380 you, you got to do a little negotiating. So I think he was, he was softening it, but it's obvious

00:50:10.900 that wouldn't have been, you know, in his perfect bill. So I guess when I listened to it, the big

00:50:15.720 stuff, because even if you can hate the little Kennedy center thing, but it's not big compared to the

00:50:22.140 rest of it. And he actually had some reasons behind everything he mentioned. And so I would say,

00:50:29.480 I'm, I know, 60% well-informed about what's in there. And the big stuff looked at least like it

00:50:37.120 had some rationale. You know, I don't know if anybody's smart enough to know that this is the

00:50:42.280 worst idea in the world or the best. You know, I always talk about the economy being a psychology

00:50:46.380 engine. And this is clearly a case where getting something done was more important, way more

00:50:52.140 important than getting it exactly right. Because, you know, you can always send out more money.

00:50:57.020 But, but if you do nothing, everything's falling apart. So they got the big thing, right? So the

00:51:03.360 big thing was do something and make it a big number. You probably heard me talking early in

00:51:09.540 the process. People were talking about 1 billion. And then at the high end, people were saying,

00:51:14.460 or 2 trillion, I mean, 1 trillion or 2 trillion. And I said, from the start, it's got to be 2 trillion.

00:51:20.280 And the reason it's got to be 2 trillion is not because I'm a genius who knows what the budget needs

00:51:24.800 to be to get the best result. It's because the number's out there. As soon as the number's out

00:51:29.760 there, it's got to be the big one. Because this is a psychology play. You want the country to say,

00:51:34.360 I didn't, I didn't stop at anything. You know, I could have saved money, but I'm not going to save

00:51:38.920 money to let one person die. It's so soon as the 2 trillion was out there, it had to be 2 trillion.

00:51:44.440 Because that's, that's the psychology engine and how it works. All right. Um, did I answer your

00:51:49.540 question? Yeah. And real quick though, I was kind of curious, I was wondering why Donald Trump

00:51:55.360 doesn't maybe have people from the military, um, in his news conferences. When I watched their

00:52:01.180 briefings, I feel so much better about what's going on. I thought he, he did until recently,

00:52:07.120 right? Did he have one of the members? Yeah. I saw one guy in uniform, but I just was kind of

00:52:13.860 curious what you thought about the optics of having him be a wartime president. Yeah. You know,

00:52:19.440 it's, it's a careful balance because, um, you don't want it to look too military because that's

00:52:25.060 scary. And, you know, some of the smartest people watching this have predicted that the military would

00:52:31.160 eventually, you know, be have having to be playing an active role in, in, uh, within the country,

00:52:37.420 which would be scary. Even if they were doing, even if they were doing everything right, and they

00:52:42.400 probably would, right? The military is very capable in so many ways. Uh, just people, the optics of it

00:52:48.400 would be bad. So it's okay to have one up there now and then, but I think I'd rather very civilian

00:52:55.480 look, um, just for the psychology of it again, but thanks for the question. Thank you.

00:53:03.740 All right. I think I'm going to end it just about here. Yeah. We've got the, uh, the Navy medical ship

00:53:11.380 that's going to sail up there pretty soon. And I don't know, maybe we're getting a handle on this.

00:53:19.960 I think the news that comes out in the next two days is just going to be so important because,

00:53:27.020 um, you know, we're going to find out if the, uh, hydrox, uh, chloroquine works and that's going

00:53:36.600 to be a real big day. And if it doesn't, and it might not, you know, president says that I say it

00:53:44.260 often, even though, even though I'm very optimistic about it, they say it often might not just can't

00:53:50.780 tell. Um, but I, I feel positive about it. All right. Uh, why is ship going to California?

00:54:00.840 Well, there's one to California and one to the East coast. So I think they've got two of them and

00:54:05.080 they put them where they expect the biggest problem. All right. That's all I got for now.

00:54:10.440 I will see you in the morning and I hope you have a terrific night. Everything's going to be great.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 27, 2020

Episode 874 Scott Adams： Taking Your Calls for the Simultaneous Swaddle

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